Tuesday, 22 October 2013

Well, that was a busy conference wasn't it? An hour and a half of nothing but updates to Apple's non-iPhone ranges. We've got a lot to cover, so let's get going:

iPad Air:

Firstly, updates to the iPad range. The new iPad air is the first major redesign of the iPad since the iPad 2:

The iPad Air is thinner, lighter and more powerful than any previous model. At just over 7mm thick it's only marginally thicker than the iPad mini, but the big statistic is the weight; less than 1lb. That's right, less than 1lb.

Internally, it features an A7X chip, the M7 motion processor seen on the iPhone 5S and a 9.7inch retina display. Capacity wise, nothing has changed, it's available in 16, 32 and 64gb flavours.

The prices for the iPad Air remain the same as the previous iPad, starting at £399 for the 16gb Wifi model.

The iPad Mini is now available with a retina display too. The iPad Mini Retina will cost £319 for the 16gb Wifi model whereas the original iPad Mini gets a price cut to £249.

Both the iPad Air and the iPad Mini Retina will be available from 1st of November.

MacBook Pro

In line with the update to the Air range in the summer, the retina MacBook Pro notebooks are being upgraded to the new Intel Haswell processors. These provide a performance boost as well as significant improvements to battery life. The 13" model now boasts an impressive 9 hour battery life while the 15" model can rack up 8 hours of use.

There has been no update to the non-retina MBP line which says to me that they will be phased out in the next year or so. Further evidence for this can be gained from the price cut to the 13" retina MBP; there is now only £100 difference between the two, the retina MBP now costs only £1099.

Mac Pro

The wonderfully redesigned Mac Pro will finally be available this December.

A radical redesign of the desktop computer, it boasts the capacity for 12 cores, huge amounts of memory and storage and the ability to run 3 of Apple's Cinema Display monitors via Thunderbolt.

I actually cannot wait to see one of these in the flesh, it is such a unique design and typical of what Apple does best.

OSX Mavericks

Lastly, the newest update to OSX, Mavericks, is available now on the Mac App Store...

For free

That's right, for the first time Apple has released a major OS iteration for free. Providing you're running OSX Lion or above, just pop into the App Store and you can download the new OS for free.

And that's it. It's a lot to take in, I know. What are you most excited for? Let me know in the comments below